YOUTUBE’S DOUBLE STANDARDS

YOUTUBE ARE CAUSING A STIR WITH THEIR NEW CENSORSHIP RULES, IT APPEARS THERE ARE DOUBLE STANDARDS AND SPECIAL EXCEPTIONS WHEN IT COMES TO THEIR POLICIES

The Las Vegas shooting is still a tragedy the world is trying to come to terms with. Conspiracy theories to one side, we can all agree that the tragedy was heartbreaking and regardless of what happened that night, a lot of people lost their lives, a lot of families are in grief and trying to come to terms with the fact they will never see their loved ones again.

YouTube caused a bit of a commotion after they announced that they would be amending their search results, reporting that conspiracy theory videos relating to the Las Vegas attack had quickly swamped the video hosting website in the days following the attack. YouTube was quick to lay out their stance on these videos, calling them fake news and stating that they mustn’t take precedence over mainstream media sources that were broadcasting the official narrative of what we’ve been told has happened that night.

Regardless of your stance on whether or not YouTube are right or wrong for censoring ‘conspiracy’ videos, they have certainly caused a commotion with their latest decision to remove monetization from a well-known YouTubers video.

Casey Neistat is a YouTube personality and vlogger, who created a video relating to the Las Vegas shooting. This video didn’t even fall under the category of ‘conspiracy’ it simply talked about the shooting and helping people of that event. Casey started up a crowdfunding campaign for the victim’s families of the shooting, he also stated that any money his video received from ad revenue would be donated to the victim’s families.

Casey was shocked to find out, just hours later, that YouTube has demonetized his video, claiming that it was not suitable for advertising.

When Casey contacted YouTube about this they told him that it was their policy to not allow ad revenue from videos about tragedies, however, twitters users were very quick to point out the inconsistency in their reasoning.

As you can see from the above image, it is clear that YouTube was allowing adverts to run on videos about the Las Vegas tragedy, though it only seems huge mainstream media sources are exempt from this rule.

It’s unclear on how YouTube will deal with this going forward, it only seems fair that they remain consistent. After all, some could argue that the funds generated from the Jimmy Kimmel video are going directly to big mainstream media corporations behind the channel, whereas Casey’s funds, generated from his video, will go directly towards helping the victims families of the shooting.

Hopefully YouTube will choose to do the right thing, personally, I’m not getting my hopes up. YouTube seems to have become ever more heavy-handed when it comes to censorship, what started out as a place for free thinkers and unique content creators to advertise their talents, thoughts, opinions and ideas, has now become a state-run propaganda machine.

Rather than asking questions as to why more and more users are searching out alternative news sources and why more content creators are publishing alternative views and opinions on events, they are instead striving to stamp out anyone who doesn’t follow the status quo.

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